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Lonoak Fire, June 2019 Monterey

Out · last measured on 25 Jun 2019

The fire started on 25 June 2019 in Monterey, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,056 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 274th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 201 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coleman · 2016Metz · 2016Stony · 2016

We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area
1,056ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
25 Jun 2019 – 25 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
25 Jun
2019
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
37km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Monterey where it started
    1,043 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
25 Jun 32.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Jun after 29.6 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jun after 29.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jun after 28.0 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jun after 32.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jun after 32.1 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Jul after 30.8 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Jul after 30.2 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Jul after 30.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Jul after 32.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Jul after 33.9 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 18 Jun 2019
After · 2 Jul 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lonoak fire last?
It burned between 25 June 2019 and 25 June 2019: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,056 hectares (10.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Monterey (1,043 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the official burnt perimeter of United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC, public domain), NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United States. It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 911

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 911.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter is official and in the public domain. For past years it comes from MTBS (Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity), run by the U.S. Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service, which map it on Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery. For the current and last year it comes from WFIGS at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC): incident perimeters mapped by fire crews, aircraft and imagery. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. County boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per county is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.